Texas Instruments is the latest beneficiary from CHIPS Act funding. The 2022 law, signed by President Biden to boost domestic silicon production in the face of rising Chinese chip imports, will give TI $1.6 billion in grants. The company will also receive $3 billion in loans and tax credits that could total between $6 billion and $8 billion.
The initiative is expected to create more than 2,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs at the new Texas Instruments plants and “thousands of indirect jobs” for construction, suppliers and support industries. TI says it expects to receive an additional $10 million to fund workforce development.
The TI grant money will go toward three chip factories already under construction in Texas and Utah. The plants will produce chips from 300-millimeter silicon wafers under the bill’s $2 billion minimum for legacy chips. The CHIPS Act focuses largely on cutting-edge silicon, such as those increasingly used for artificial intelligence. TI’s production will go toward less advanced processors for things like smartphones, home appliances and national defense. GlobalFoundries received $1.5 billion for legacy silicon production in February. With TI’s funding award on Friday, the government has now met its minimum quota for legacy chips.
Bloomberg grades China has recently increased its investments in traditional chips. In addition to creating jobs in the United States, the CHIPS Act was designed to reduce China’s influence as silicon becomes a more essential global resource. Other beneficiaries include Intel ($8.5 billion), TSMC ($6.6 billion) and Samsung ($6.4 billion).
Texas Instruments said it will invest about $40 billion in Utah and Texas, including two more factories in Sherman, Texas. However, they are not expected to be operational until after 2030. For the CHIPS Act, the Commerce Department is prioritizing projects that can be completed before the end of the decade, leaving delayed plants without federal funding.
The $280 billion CHIPS Act passed in 2022 with 64 votes in the Senate and 243 in the House. The bill included $39 billion in subsidies for domestic chip manufacturing, 25 percent tax credits for manufacturing costs, and $13 billion for workforce training.
After the bill was passed in 2022, Biden saying “It would strengthen our national security by making us less dependent on foreign sources of semiconductors.” He said it included “safeguards to ensure that companies receiving taxpayer dollars invest in the United States and that unionized workers build new manufacturing plants across the country.”
